RCEditions

Performers
Thanks to my peers in the sax section growing up, Darryl Malone, Billy Buvens, Faith Friese, Ray Elliott, Glenn Klose, Dennis Sustala, chamber music partners Larry Pratt, Denise Petski (first chamber music pals at NEC, who taught me that it is easier to work with friends), Boston musicians whom as a whole, including both the Boston Symphony and the free lance community which makes up the entirety of the other playing in the area, as the greatest group of musicians that I have ever heard or worked with. I remember Bill Moyer, the then Personnel Manager of the Boston Symphony, telling me, just before he hired me the very first time, that when he hired an extra, such as for 'Pictures', he expected in Boston that the quality of the orchestra could and would go up just a bit. I always tried to live up to that. Bill Moyer was responsible for the collective identity of the orchestra in those early years I was playing, at least in my view. And even though it took him some time to agree to hear me, nevertheless I persisted and he listened, and we were both polite and patient with each other. On my first call to play for the BSO I did not have enough money for money for black shoes. I sat next to Phil Viscuglia, the bass clarinetist, who always treated me well. I was wearing black rain shoes (rubbers) over my brown shoes. He looked down, smiled, and didn't say a word, except to welcome me. And it was always so. Harold Wright, Al Genovese, Sherman Walt, Larry Thorstenberg, Matt Ruggiero, Wayne Rapier, Chester Schmitz, Ralph Gomberg, Doriot Dwyer, Rolland Tapley (a violinist who used to play the sax parts in the time of Koussevitzky), Frank Epstein, Ron Barron, Rob Sheena, Mark Ludwig, Bill Hudgins, John Ferrillo, Keisuke Wakao all, were and remained very generous over the years, and in some cases we worked on other musical projects away from the orchestra.

Also, many thanks to violist Scott Nickrenz, who hired me on the basis of one unsolicited recording to play Hindemith Trio with him and Joseph Kalichstein at Brooklyn Academy, very early in my career, my first professional chamber music date, who gave me a helping hand. Thanks to Rudolf Serkin for the same, and for Felix Galimir and Patricia Rogers (bassoonist Metropolitan Opera) who sat next to me, and helped me learn how to play chamber music, in the Schoenberg ‘Kammersymphonie’ at the Marlboro Festival, when I was short on both experience and confidence. And conductor, Richard Hoenich, who embraced every saxophone project with orchestra I ever had with the New England Conservatory Orchestra, and has been the dearest of friends. And Claudio Dioguardi, who has singlehandedly built a saxophone culture in Venezuela, and let me help just a bit. And of course thanks to Radnofsky Quartet members Hewitt, Gattegno and Staudlin.

Texas Band Directors (and a few from the Northeast)

A Salute to (My) Teachers

7. 'We get by with a little help from our friends' - thanks to The Beatles